So this Sunday a number of churches will not be having a service. I’ve read a few articles about it and they’ve given some decent reasons why. Most of them emphasize the importance of honoring family time. Some acknowledge the general low attendance of previous years that Christmas fell on a Sunday, and wanting those who volunteer not to feel obligated to come. I think most of those reasons make a lot of sense. But, it does give opportunity to question what the real purpose of church is.

“Church” as we think of today is an essential component of any Christian persons life, at least we hold it to be so. Anyone, you know who is not going to church on a regular basis you probably consider being in a slump, a struggle with their faith, falling away or something other then a healthy Christian. Skipping church for anything but a very good reason is looked down upon as well. So, why the collective decision to forgo church this Sunday?

What I wonder, and I think is worth considering, is that if this Sunday, because it is a time many people will be with others that they love and care about, is an appropriate enough day to skip church, then are there other days that are just as appropriate? And if there are reasons that are appropriate to skip church, then are we saying that church is not essential to be at EVERY week? So what IS the purpose of church then? If spending time with family on Sunday morning is more important THIS Sunday, why isn’t it more important EVERY Sunday?

I think my intitial hesitation about the whole building thing came when the church building craze started my last year of high school. My church decided we need to add a $2.5 million addition on to our building. I didn’t realize we were outgrowing the original building in the first place, and now they wanted to add on. And in adding on they wanted it to look really nice, which is understandable since the current building looked quite nice. But I thought to myself $2.5 million is a whole lot of money, and it just doesn’t seem necessary.
Little did I know over the next few years practically every church I went to was doing a building campaign. Some of them really needed it, others I wasn’t so sure. We attended one church for a while and then they started a building campaign for a second building and they where putting an indoor waterfall in it. That was it, I was gone.

Then at some point I started thinking… Why the heck do we need a building anyways? I mean we all live somewhere, why don’t we meet in our homes? It seemed to me that’s mostly what the early church did. I mean, it’s true we couldn’t all pack in to hear the really good preachers, but since when is that what it’s all about? Some would say that’s what small groups are for, to meet in smaller communities in our homes and stuff (I’ll address this later).

I’m not saying church buildings don’t have a purpose, I’ve just started questioning if they are really necessary at all. I mean is it feasible to do the things we do in a church building in our homes instead? And what about bigger events? Is it possible to do those in a place other than our own building?

One of my main concerns about the building is that seems to be all we spend our money on, or talk about spending our money on. The main time you hear about making tithing pledges in most churches it seems is usually related to a building campaign. And then the church goes into debt to purchase the new building before they even have all the money.

That was just a rant of sorts, I really should fine tune it a bit, but there it is raw